Thursday, September 27, 2012

Do you think books by men and women on similar topics are received differently?
Well, over there [Eugenides points to his publisher's book shelf] I see “NW” by Zadie Smith,
and I think that Zadie Smith is treated exactly like one of the
literary male authors that had been brought into this category. It seems
to me that there’s a difference between the kinds of books that
Jonathan Franzen writes and Jodi Picoult writes — so it’s not surprising
to me that they’re treated differently in terms of review coverage or
literary coverage. I don’t think that’s based on gender.
I think
right now probably the writer that every writer loves the most is Alice
Munro. I teach with Joyce Carol Oates; I don’t think she suffers from
this. To me, it’s a question of actual category writing. It was kind of a
genre novel bumping up against a literary novel. I think those are
actually different things. I don’t think it had to do with male or
female.Would “The Marriage Plot” have had a different cover if it was written by a woman? Something pink or frilly or less serious?
As
a male you can never know and you’re not supposed to talk about it. But
I have lots of female literary novelists who I don’t think would agree.
I’m friendly with Meg Wolitzer and she was a big fan of “The Marriage
Plot,” and she wrote something about this,
and especially about the treatments of the covers. I wondered about
that, if that might be true, if women get treated differently in the way
that their covers are marketed. You know, it’s possible.
To me,
it was a little bit … I didn’t really know why Jodi Picoult is
complaining. She’s a huge best-seller and everyone reads her books, and
she doesn’t seem starved for attention, in my mind — so I was surprised
that she would be the one belly-aching. There’s plenty of extremely
worthy novelists who are getting very little attention. I think they
have more right to complain. And it usually has nothing to do with their
gender, but just the marketplace.

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Generally regarded as the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto is also completely absurd. Basically? It's the book equivalent of a hysterical stranger in a velvet suit hurriedly whispering to you from behind a curtain before pushing you down an unending set of stone stairs. Moving portraits! Giant helmets! Eternal melancholy! Let's marry each other's daughters!

Thoroughly bizarre and recommended. It's also exceedingly worth reading about. Horace Walpole initially claimed credit as translator instead of author, claiming the story had been translated "from the Original Italian of Onuphirio Muralto."

All of your characters, both in this book and in previous
novels, display a really interesting appreciation for jazz, classical, and rock
music. What musical pieces would you include on a Murakami playlist of sorts
that would represent the range of music in your books?
Music is an indispensable part of my life. Whenever I write a
novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose.)
When I was writing my newest novel, After Dark, the melody of Curtis
Fuller's "Five Spot After Dark" kept running through my head. Music
always stimulates my imagination. When I'm writing I usually have some Baroque
music on low in the background chamber music by Bach, Telemann, and the like.

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